New in 1.0.178
A Desktop Pet That Knows Your Mac
Adopt a pixel cat or dog that lives along the bottom of your screen. It wanders, naps and chases your cursor — and it reacts to what your Mac is actually doing: panting when the CPU is pegged, shivering when the battery is nearly flat, dancing when music plays. Free, and part of Notchy.
It reads your Mac
Sweat drops when the CPU passes its hot threshold or macOS starts throttling. Shivering when you're unplugged and low. A happy moment when you plug in. Stillness while a Pomodoro runs. It sits and watches when a video plays and dances when music does — and hover it to hear why.
Look after it
Feed it, play with it, pat it, put it down for a nap. Food, energy and friendship meters fill and drain, and a daily care streak counts up with milestones from 3 days to 365.
Eight breeds, all with personality
Four cats and four dogs, each with its own voice. Dogs burst into zoomies across the screen; cats stalk your cursor when it sits still. Or adopt one of Notchy's Pomodoro mascots instead.
Collect and share
Every breed has a 1-in-50 shiny, rolled the first time you adopt it. Sixteen hidden discoveries show only as cryptic hints until you earn them, and seasonal hats turn up only in October and December. Share any moment as a card.
Tilt your Mac to play
On Apple Silicon MacBooks, tilt the Mac and the pet slides toward the low side. It uses the built-in motion sensor, only while the pet is visible.
Polite about resources
The animation, timers and motion sensor all stop when the display sleeps or the screen locks, and the animation parks in Low Power Mode. Pin the pet to keep it in one spot, or switch speech and potty breaks off.
Everything Notchy does, for free
- Fluid Dynamic Island animations on the Mac notch
- Command palette (⌃⌥K) — every action one keystroke away
- Knock — double-tap a modifier key to open the notch
- AI usage tracker (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot)
- Detach any tab into a menu-bar popover
- Now Playing music controls (Apple Music & Spotify)
- Time-synced karaoke lyrics under the notch
- Mac clipboard history shelf (password-manager safe)
- Searchable clipboard — filter by text, file name, or OCR'd words
- On-device OCR — copy a screenshot, get its text (Apple Vision)
- Window snapping — drag a window to the notch to tile it
- App Launcher — pin apps to the notch, open with one tap
- Text snippets — TextExpander-style pastes from the ⌘K palette
- One-tap screen capture to clipboard + shelf
- Color eyedropper — sample any pixel, hex auto-copied
- System-wide mic mute for every meeting app at once
- Keystroke HUD for demos & screencasts (secure-input safe)
- Keyboard cleaning lock with countdown island (⌘⎋ unlocks)
- Menu-bar icon hiding — Bartender-style separator & chevron
- Live CPU / memory / network stats flyout
- Open GitHub PR count in the notch (Keychain-stored token)
- iPhone-style call island — Answer/Decline FaceTime on the notch
- Notch Terminal — real VT100/xterm shell in a PTY, its own tab
- Camera Guard — alert (or block) when any app opens your camera
- Caps Lock HUD — brief island on every toggle
- Full Charge island with adjustable threshold + low-battery sound
- Alt HUD styles — edge-pinned bar or circular gauge off the notch
- Audio-reactive Now Playing visualizer (real FFT of system audio)
- Custom closed-notch idle animation — drop in your own Lottie JSON
- Drag-and-drop file drop shelf — persists across relaunches
- Zip & unzip files right from the shelf
- Image converter (HEIC, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF) + video → GIF
- Run Apple Shortcuts with one tap
- Screenshots auto-staged on the shelf, ready to drag
- Download finished alerts with Reveal in Finder
- USB drive mount island with one-tap Eject
- Apple Reminders quick capture & due list
- macOS Pomodoro notch timer & stopwatch — streaks + 7-day chart
- Resizable expanded panel (width & height, live preview)
- System HUDs (volume, brightness, battery)
- Audio output switcher (speakers, AirPods, monitor)
- AirPods connection manager & battery
- Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad battery + low-battery alerts
- Quick notes & Calendar widgets
- Camera Mirror (check your appearance)
- Keep Awake (caffeine toggle)
- Teleprompter (Cuely) for Zoom calls
- Focus-aware alerts & native haptic feedback
- Lock screen widgets & hide-the-notch mode
- 133 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple Silicon
Desktop Pet for Mac — FAQ
Is there a desktop pet app for Mac?
Yes. Notchy includes one from version 1.0.178: a pixel cat or dog that walks along your desktop and reacts to your Mac. Notchy is free and runs on macOS 13 Ventura or later.
What does the pet react to?
CPU heat and thermal throttling, low battery, plugging in the charger, a running Pomodoro timer, video playing in a browser or player, and music from any app. The most urgent one wins — a hot or dying Mac outranks everything.
Which pets can I adopt?
Eight breeds — four cats and four dogs — each with a rare shiny variant. You can also adopt one of Notchy's Pomodoro mascots as your companion, and name any of them.
Does a desktop pet slow down my Mac?
It's built not to. Its timers, motion sensor and animation stop whenever nobody can see it — display asleep or screen locked — and it stops animating in Low Power Mode.
Can I stop it from wandering?
Yes. Pin it and it stays where you put it, with no wandering or zoomies. Or turn the pet off in Settings.
Does it work on Intel Macs?
Yes — everything except tilt-to-play, which needs the motion sensor in Apple Silicon Macs.
Is it free?
Yes. Notchy has no trial, licence key, subscription or in-app purchase.